With two US Olympians at the top of the leaderboard playing for Ryder Cup spots and the FedEx Cup lead heading to the back nine at Bethpage on Sunday, the final stretch of The Barclays looked set up to be one of the best finishes of the PGA Tour season.
2016 Barclays results: Patrick Reed wins at Bethpage, secures Ryder Cup spot after Rickie Fowler back-nine collapse
The two Olympic teammates were tied at the turn, but a 4-over-par back nine from Fowler gave Reed plenty of room to back into a victory in the first leg of the FedEx Cup.
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Instead, it, uh, wasn’t.
Needing at least a Top-3 finish to secure a Ryder Cup berth, an ugly back nine 4-over-39 from Rickie Fowler ejected him from both Davis Love III’s roster and largely handed the title to Olympic teammate Patrick Reed. But it wasn’t particularly easy for Reed down the backstretch, either. Both players sent tee balls rocketing left and right over Bethpage Black’s difficult closing stretch -- with Reed playing the final four in 2-over-par, while Fowler closed with a bogey-double-birdie-bogey final four. It was downright ugly, offensive golf to watch at times -- but that’s what Bethpage is capable of doing to the world’s best players.
But for Reed, who hadn’t won anywhere on Tour since the 2015 season-opening Hyundai Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, a win is a win -- especially one with the benefits that this one will bring. Entering the event squarely on the Ryder Cup bubble in 8th place, the win squarely locked up his spot on the US roster for Hazeltine at the end of September. That should be good news for US golf fans: Reed’s beat-you-at-all-costs, happy-to-be-hated style has translated well to match play formats over the years, and his results in Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup starts reflect that.
It also puts him in the driver’s seat for the next three FedEx Cup events -- pulling ahead of Jason Day in the overall standings. The FedEx Cup events are heavily weighted points-wise to create drama over the course of the Playoffs for obvious reason, and his lone 2016 win was enough to propel him past Jason Day in the standings heading to next week’s Deutsche Bank Championship at TPC Boston over Labor Day weekend.
But, the bigger story will be Rickie -- and what to make of another Sunday collapse.
For all his attention and goodwill he’s earned by being a marketable player and good guy, Fowler’s struggled to close out tournaments over the course of his career. He’s never won an event after sleeping on a lead, and he’s looked especially out of sorts since falling victim to Hideki Matsuyama in a playoff at Scottsdale in February. He’s had two solo Sunday leads at fairly big-time Tour stops since (Wells Fargo at Quail Hollow in May, today at The Barclays), and both have ended in the same way -- with over-par rounds that have left Fowler ejected from contention by the time he was walking up the 18th green. He’s clearly had some swing troubles in 2016, a different sort of topic, but the timing of the collapses is enough to make one wonder if Fowler’s got some mental obstacles and scarring to overcome after becoming emotional after the loss in Phoenix earlier this year.
Now he’ll have to wait on Davis Love III to decide if those issues are worth overlooking and if he’s worthy of one of the four captain’s selections Love will hand out in September.
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